March 9, 2005: Headlines: COS - Brazil: Politics: NGO's: Rocky Mountain News: Brazil RPCV Pat Waak elected Colorado Democratic Party chairman
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March 9, 2005: Headlines: COS - Brazil: Politics: NGO's: Rocky Mountain News: Brazil RPCV Pat Waak elected Colorado Democratic Party chairman
Brazil RPCV Pat Waak elected Colorado Democratic Party chairman
Brazil RPCV Pat Waak elected Colorado Democratic Party chairman
Gates backs off on Dems
Ex-party chief won't go to DNC over vote
Caption: Post / Brian Brainerd
Pat Waak traveled the state in her apparently successful bid to oust Chris Gates and lead Colorado’s Democratic party. Photo: Denver Post / Brian Brainerd
By Gwen Florio, Rocky Mountain News
March 9, 2005
Former Colorado Democratic Party chairman Chris Gates softened his defiant stance Tuesday toward Pat Waak, who bested him by three votes for the party leadership.
Gates, who had said he would seek a ruling from the Democratic National Committee, is saying that for now he will let the state party decide if the election was valid.
Gates declined to say why he is taking a different tack, but the national party would have kicked the matter back to the state party anyway.
It wasn't clear Tuesday when or how a recount would proceed.
"Who knows? Maybe she won by more than the disputed number, and we have no need for a challenge," Gates said.
Waak's 187-184 victory came over the weekend at the Democratic State Central Committee meetings. Gates challenged the outcome, claiming that seven proxy votes in his favor were improperly omitted from the count.
Waak's ascendance puts the state party in the hands of a relative unknown, especially compared with Gates, who gained national prominence in November as Colorado's Democrats booted Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature and picked up a U.S. Senate and House seat besides.
The public power struggle between Gates and Waak provoked glee among Republicans and consternation within a state Democratic Party determined to build on the first significant advantage it has held in four decades.
"The rift was there. Now all you've done is change sides. I think we just need to move forward and accept the results," said state Rep. Jim Riesberg, a Democrat from Waak's own Weld County. Riesberg sent a proxy vote for Gates but said Waak "did a good grass-roots campaign. . . . She seems to be a capable lady."
Waak has spent her time since Saturday fielding telephone calls from party power brokers and reporters, as well as trying to kick- start reorganization within a party hungry for a 2006 gubernatorial victory to cement its 2004 results.
She moved to counter assertions that her chairmanship represented a victory for a liberal wing of the party that last year backed political novice Mike Miles against centrist Attorney General Ken Salazar, who defeated Miles in the U.S. Senate primary and went on to win the seat.
"I have trouble with labels," she said. "I really feel at this stage in the political history of the state, we need to concentrate on bottom-up politics" rather than candidates being anointed by party leadership, she said.
Ted Weverka, a Miles supporter from Boulder who had sought to be the party's first vice chairman, said the fact that he was defeated by Gates ally Dan Slater shows that the party's problems involved Gates' leadership, rather than a lingering liberal-centrist rift.
"He doesn't work well with people," Weverka said of Gates.
Waak said she'll try to focus on a unified message for the party.
In doing so, Waak said, she'll draw on her fund-raising and administrative background with groups and agencies such as the National Audubon Society and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
She was deputy campaign manager for Sargent Shriver's 1976 presidential campaign; tried but failed to collect enough signatures to run as a 4th Congressional District candidate in 2002; and is on the Weld County Democratic Executive Committee.
The county is hardly a Democratic stronghold; with Republicans (54.3 percent) and even unaffiliated voters (31.8 percent) outnumbering the Democrats' 24.66 percent of voter registration there.
Greeley Councilwoman Pam Shaddock said, "I think Pat recognized that everybody who is kind of outside the Denver-Boulder area feels like we haven't had as much attention as we need to build the party, and she ran on a platform of inclusiveness."
When this story was posted in March 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
| The Peace Corps Library Peace Corps Online is proud to announce that the Peace Corps Library is now available online. With over 30,000 index entries in over 500 categories, this is the largest collection of Peace Corps related reference material in the world. From Acting to Zucchini, you can use the Main Index to find hundreds of stories about RPCVs who have your same interests, who served in your Country of Service, or who serve in your state. |
| RPCVs in Congress ask colleagues to support PC RPCVs Sam Farr, Chris Shays, Thomas Petri, James Walsh, and Mike Honda have asked their colleagues in Congress to add their names to a letter they have written to the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, asking for full funding of $345 M for the Peace Corps in 2006. As a follow-on to Peace Corps week, please read the letter and call your Representative in Congress and ask him or her to add their name to the letter. |
| March 1: National Day of Action Tuesday, March 1, is the NPCA's National Day of Action. Please call your Senators and ask them to support the President's proposed $27 Million budget increase for the Peace Corps for FY2006 and ask them to oppose the elimination of Perkins loans that benefit Peace Corps volunteers from low-income backgrounds. Follow this link for step-by-step information on how to make your calls. Then take our poll and leave feedback on how the calls went. |
| Coates Redmon, Peace Corps Chronicler Coates Redmon, a staffer in Sargent Shriver's Peace Corps, died February 22 in Washington, DC. Her book "Come as You Are" is considered to be one of the finest (and most entertaining) recountings of the birth of the Peace Corps and how it was literally thrown together in a matter of weeks. If you want to know what it felt like to be young and idealistic in the 1960's, get an out-of-print copy. We honor her memory. |
| Make a call for the Peace Corps PCOL is a strong supporter of the NPCA's National Day of Action and encourages every RPCV to spend ten minutes on Tuesday, March 1 making a call to your Representatives and ask them to support President Bush's budget proposal of $345 Million to expand the Peace Corps. Take our Poll: Click here to take our poll. We'll send out a reminder and have more details early next week. |
| Peace Corps Calendar: Tempest in a Teapot? Bulgarian writer Ognyan Georgiev has written a story which has made the front page of the newspaper "Telegraf" criticizing the photo selection for his country in the 2005 "Peace Corps Calendar" published by RPCVs of Madison, Wisconsin. RPCV Betsy Sergeant Snow, who submitted the photograph for the calendar, has published her reply. Read the stories and leave your comments. |
| WWII participants became RPCVs Read about two RPCVs who participated in World War II in very different ways long before there was a Peace Corps. Retired Rear Adm. Francis J. Thomas (RPCV Fiji), a decorated hero of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, died Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 at 100. Mary Smeltzer (RPCV Botswana), 89, followed her Japanese students into WWII internment camps. We honor both RPCVs for their service. |
| Bush's FY06 Budget for the Peace Corps The White House is proposing $345 Million for the Peace Corps for FY06 - a $27.7 Million (8.7%) increase that would allow at least two new posts and maintain the existing number of volunteers at approximately 7,700. Bush's 2002 proposal to double the Peace Corps to 14,000 volunteers appears to have been forgotten. The proposed budget still needs to be approved by Congress. |
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Story Source: Rocky Mountain News
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Brazil; Politics; NGO's
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